Endgame is an absurdist, tragicomicone-act play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. It is about a blind, paralyzed, domineering elderly man, his geriatric parents, and his servile companion in an abandoned house in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, who await an unspecified "end". Much of the play's content consists of terse, back and forth dialogue between the characters reminiscent of bantering, along with trivial stage actions. The plot is supplanted by the development of a grotesque story-within-a-story that the character Hamm is relating. The play's title refers to chess and frames the characters as acting out a losing battle with each other or their fate.
Originally written in French (entitled Fin de partie), the play was translated into English by Beckett himself[1] and first performed on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a French-language production. Written before but premiering after Waiting for Godot[citation needed], it is usually considered among Beckett's most notable works. The literary critic Harold Bloom called it the most original work of literature of the 20th century, saying that "[Other dramatists of the time] have no Endgame; to find a drama of its reverberatory power, you have to return to Ibsen."[2] Beckett considered it his masterpiece and saw it as the most aesthetically perfect, compact representation of his artistic views on human existence, and refers to it when speaking autobiographically through Krapp in Krapp's Last Tape when he mentions he had "already written the masterpiece".[citation needed].
Characters
Hamm: Throughout the play remains seated in an armchair fitted with casters, unable to stand, and blind. Hamm is dominating, acrimonious, banterous and comfortable in his misery. He claims to suffer, but his pessimism seems self-elected. He chooses to be isolated and self-absorbed. His relationships come off as parched of human empathy; he refers to his father as a "fornicator", refused to help his neighbor with oil for her lamp when she badly needed it, and has a fake pet dog which is a stuffed animal.
Clov: Hamm's servant who is unable to sit. Taken in by Hamm as a child. Clov is wistful. He longs for something else, but has nothing to pursue. More mundane than Hamm, he reflects on his opportunities but takes little charge. Clov is benevolent, but weary.
Nagg: Hamm's father who has no legs and lives in a dustbin. Nagg is gentle and fatherly, yet sorrowful and aggrieved in the face of his son's ingratitude.
Nell: Hamm's mother who has no legs and lives in a dustbin next to Nagg. Reflective, she delivers a monologue about a beautiful day on Lake Como, and apparently dies during the course of the play.
Samuel Beckett said that in his choice of character's names, he had in mind the word "hammer" and the word "nail" in English, French and German respectively, "clou" and "nagel".[citation needed]
Beckett was an avid chess player, and the term endgame refers to the ending phase of a chess game. The play is dimly visible as a kind of metaphorical chess, albeit with limited symbolic meaning. Hamm at one point says "My kingdom for a knight-man!". Hamm, limited in his movement, resembles the king piece on a chess board, and Clov, who moves for him, a knight.
Synopsis
In a dreary, dim and nondescript room, Clov draws the curtains from the windows and prepares his master Hamm for his day. He says, "It's nearly finished," though it is not clear what he is referring to. He awakes Hamm by pulling a sheet from over him. After Hamm removes a bloodstained handkerchief from over his head and face, he says "It's time it ended." He summons Clov by means of a whistle, and they banter briefly.
Eventually, Hamm's parents, Nell and Nagg, appear from inside two trash cans at the back of the stage. Hamm is as equally threatening, condescending and acrimonious with his parents as with his servant, though they still share a degree of mutual humor; Nell eventually sinks back into her bin, and Clov, examining her, says, "She has no pulse." Hamm tells his father he is telling a story and recites it partially to him, a fragment which treats on a derelict man who comes crawling on his belly to the narrator, who is putting up Christmas decorations, begging him for food for his starving boy sheltering in the wilderness.
Clov returns, and they continue to banter in a way that is both quick-witted and comical yet with dark, undertones. Clov often threatens to leave Hamm, but it is made clear that he has nowhere to go as the world outside seems to be destroyed. Much of the stage action is intentionally banal and monotonous, including sequences where Clov moves Hamm's chair in various directions so that he feels himself to be in the right position, as well as moving him nearer to the window.
By the end of the play, Clov finally seems intent on pursuing his commitment of leaving his cruel master Hamm. Clov tells him there is no more of the painkiller left, which Hamm has been insisting on getting his dose of throughout the play. Hamm finishes his dark, chilling story by having the narrator berate the collapsed man for the futility of trying to feed his son for a few more days when evidently their luck has run out (it becomes plain that the character of the narrator is Hamm himself, relating the events which brought Clov [the man's son] to him). Hamm believes Clov has left, being blind, but Clov re-enters and stands in the room silently with his coat on and carrying luggage, going nowhere. Hamm calls for his father, but receives no answer; he discards some of his belongings, and says that, though he has made his exit, his bloodstained handkerchief, which he replaces over his face and head, will "remain".
Themes of Endgame include decay, insatiety and dissatisfaction, pain, monotony, absurdity, humor, horror, meaninglessness, nothingness, existentialism, nonsense, solipsism and people's inability to relate to or find completion in one another. Other themes include narrative or story-telling, family relations, nature, destruction, abandonment, and sorrow.
Hamm's story is broken up and told in segments throughout the play. It serves essentially as part of the climax of Endgame, albeit somewhat inconclusively.
Hamm's story is gripping for how the narrative tone it is told in contrasts with the way the play the characters are in seems to be written or proceed. Whereas Endgame is somehow lurching, starting and stopping, rambling, unbearably impatient and sometimes incoherent, Hamm's story in some ways has a much more clear, liquid, fluid, descriptive narrative lens to it. In fact, in the way it uses run-of-the-mill literary techniques like describing the setting, facial expressions or an exchange of dialogue, in slightly bizarre ways, it almost seems like a parody of writing itself. Beckett's eerie stories about people at their last gasp often doing or seeking something futile is central to his art. It could be taken to represent the inanity of existence, but it also seems to hint at mocking not only life but storytelling itself, inverting and negating the literary craft with stories that are idiotically written and overwrought.
Characteristic Beckettian features in Endgame include bicycles, a seemingly imaginary son, pity, darkness, a shelter, and a story being told within the play.
The play has postmodernist and metafictional elements, including the fact that characters recurrently hint that they are aware they are characters in a play.
In the early 1960s, an English language production produced by Philippe Staib and directed by Beckett, with Patrick Magee and Jack MacGowran, was staged at the Studio des Champs-Elysees, Paris. After the Paris production, Beckett directed two other productions of the play: at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt, Berlin, 26 September 1967, with Ernst Schröder as Hamm and Horst Bollmann as Clov; and at the Riverside Studios, London, May 1980 with Rick Cluchey as Hamm and Bud Thorpe as Clov.[5]
In 1984, JoAnne Akalaitis directed the play at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The production featured music from Philip Glass and was set in a derelict subway tunnel. Grove Press, the owner of Beckett's work, took legal action against the theatre. The issue was settled out of court through the agreement of an insert into the program, part of which was written by Beckett:
Any production of Endgame which ignores my stage directions is completely unacceptable to me. My play requires an empty room and two small windows. The American Repertory Theater production which dismisses my directions is a complete parody of the play as conceived by me. Anybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this.[6]
In 1985 Beckett directed "Waiting for Godot", "Krapp's Last Tape" and "Endgame" as stage pieces with the San Quentin Players. All three productions were grouped together under the title "Beckett Directs Beckett", and the production toured Europe and parts of Asia.[7]
In 1992, a videotaped production directed by Beckett, with Walter Asmus as the television director, was made as part of the Beckett Directs Beckett series, with Rick Cluchey as Hamm, Bud Thorpe as Clov, Alan Mandell as Nagg and Teresita Garcia-Suro as Nell.[9]
In 2019, the play was produced by Pan Pan Theatre at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. The production was directed by Gavin Quinn and starred Andrew Bennett, Des Keogh, Rosaleen Linehan and Antony Morris. The production was designed by Aedin Cosgrove.[16]
The French version was staged in 2022 at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris. Jacques Osinski directed, Hamm was played by Frédéric Leidgens, Clov by Denis Lavant, Nagg and Nell by Peter Bonke and Claudine Delvaux.[21]
A new production directed by Ciarán O'Reilly opened at the Irish Repertory Theater in New York City with previews beginning 25 January 2023 and an opening date of 2 February, with John Douglas Thompson as Hamm, Bill Irwin as Clov, Joe Grifasi as Nagg and Patrice Johnson Chevannes as Nell.[22] The production was originally scheduled to run until 12 March, but has now been extended until 9 April.
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd.
Waiting for Godot is a play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett's reworking of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled "a tragicomedy in two acts". In a poll conducted by the British Royal National Theatre in 1998/99, it was voted as the "most significant English-language play of the 20th century".
The theatre of the absurd is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of theatre the plays represent. The plays focus largely on ideas of existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down. The structure of the plays is typically a round shape, with the finishing point the same as the starting point. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to the ultimate conclusion—silence.
Play is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German as Spiel on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic in London. It was not well-received upon its British premiere.
Ohio Impromptu is a "playlet" by Samuel Beckett.
Krapp's Last Tape is a 1958 one-act play, in English, by Samuel Beckett. With a cast of one man, it was written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue". It was inspired by Beckett's experience of listening to Magee reading extracts from Molloy and From an Abandoned Work on the BBC Third Programme in December 1957.
Beckett on Film was a project aimed at making film versions of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett's stage plays, with the exception of the early and unperformed Eleutheria. This endeavour was successfully completed, with the first films being shown in 2001.
Joseph Chaikin was an American theatre director, actor, playwright, and pedagogue.
Will Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. His play, Thom Pain was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2005. His play The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it received a Drama Desk Special Award and was named Best Play on Broadway by USA Today, and best American play of 2014 by The Guardian. His play The Open House was presented Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2014 and won the Obie Award for Playwriting as well as other awards, and was on both TIME Magazine and Time Out New York 's Top Ten Plays of 2014.
What Where is Samuel Beckett's last play produced following a request for a new work for the 1983 Autumn Festival in Graz, Austria. It was written between February and March 1983 initially in French as Quoi où and translated by Beckett himself.
Not I is a short dramatic monologue written in 1972 by Samuel Beckett which was premiered at the "Samuel Beckett Festival" by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York.
Patrick George Magee was an Irish actor. He was noted for his collaborations with playwrights Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, sometimes called "Beckett's favourite actor," as well as creating the role of the Marquis de Sade in the original stage and screen productions of Marat/Sade.
That Time is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett, written in English between 8 June 1974 and August 1975. The play was specially written for actor Patrick Magee, who delivered its first performance on the occasion of Beckett's seventieth birthday celebration, at London's Royal Court Theatre on 20 May 1976.
Embers is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957. First broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, the play won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year. Donald McWhinnie directed Jack MacGowran – for whom the play was specially written – as "Henry", Kathleen Michael as "Ada" and Patrick Magee as "Riding Master" and "Music Master". The play was translated into French by Beckett himself and Robert Pinget as Cendres and was published in 1959 by Les Éditions de Minuit. The first stage production was by the French Graduate Circle of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival, 1977."
Ghost Trio is a television play, written in English by Samuel Beckett. It was written in 1975, taped in October 1976 and the first broadcast was on BBC2 on 17 April 1977 as part of The Lively Arts programme Beckett himself entitled Shades. Donald McWhinnie directed with Ronald Pickup and Billie Whitelaw. The play's original title was to be Tryst. "On Beckett’s notebook, the word was crossed out vigorously and the new title Ghost Trio written next to it. On the title page of the BBC script the same handwritten title change can be found, indicating that it must have been corrected at the very last minute."
The Actor's Nightmare is a short comic play by Christopher Durang. It involves an accountant named George Spelvin, who is mistaken for an actor's understudy and forced to perform in a play for which he does not know any of the lines.
Walter D. Asmus is a German theatre director.
Fin de partie is a one-act opera by György Kurtág, set to a French-language libretto adapted by the composer from the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett, with the inclusion of a setting of Beckett's English-language poem "Roundelay" at the start of the opera. Kurtág fully titled this work, his first opera, Samuel Beckett: Fin de partie: scènes et monologues, opéra en un acte. Kurtág dedicated the opera to the memory of "mon professeur Ferenc Farkas and of mon ami Tamás Blum": qui, dans ma jeunesse, m'ont appri (sic) l'essentiel sur l'opéra [who, in my youth, taught me the essentials of opera].
David Warrilow was an English actor best known as one of the "finest interpreters of Samuel Beckett’s work".
Alvin Epstein was an American actor and director. He was a founding member of both the American Repertory Theater and Yale Repertory Theatre. He was particularly admired for his performances in the plays of Samuel Beckett. He also served as Artistic Director at the Guthrie Theater.
Adorno, Theodor W.; Jones, Michael T. (1982). "Trying to Understand Endgame". New German Critique (26): 119–150. doi:10.2307/488027. JSTOR488027. INIST12309609. Rpt. in The Adorno Reader. Ed. Brian O'Connor. London: Blackwell, 2000. 319–352. ISBN0-631-21077-6.
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